TCP/IP Contracts

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring TCP/IP skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited TCP/IP over the 6 months leading up to 6 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 219 286 239
Rank change year-on-year +67 -47 +39
Contract jobs citing TCP/IP 361 352 685
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.23% 0.82% 1.16%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 9.65% 6.37% 9.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 258 241 423
10th Percentile £225 £188 £256
25th Percentile £376 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £629 £575 £641
90th Percentile £750 £650 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £477
% change year-on-year - +4.82% +19.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 19 50
10th Percentile £17.87 £16.00 £21.19
25th Percentile £28.00 £20.00 £50.42
Median hourly rate £54.50 £56.49 £63.78
Median % change year-on-year -3.52% -11.42% +123.77%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £70.60
90th Percentile - £66.25 £77.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - +195.45%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

TCP/IP falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 3,742 5,525 7,311
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.76% 12.80% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,302 3,306 4,755
10th Percentile £213 £205 £240
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £520
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -4.81% +4.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.11% - +7.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 420 473
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.50 £9.80
25th Percentile £17.30 £16.72 £10.63
Median hourly rate £30.70 £40.00 £18.82
Median % change year-on-year -23.25% +112.54% -31.56%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.40 £45.88 £18.50
% change year-on-year -46.81% +148.00% -13.95%

TCP/IP
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing TCP/IP as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing TCP/IP.

Daily rate trend for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing TCP/IP over the 6 months to 6 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing TCP/IP.

Hourly rate trend for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing TCP/IP over the 6 months to 6 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for TCP/IP in the UK

TCP/IP
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing TCP/IP within the UK over the 6 months to 6 May 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +51 282 £500 +2.56% 383
UK excluding London +18 165 £500 - 314
Work from Home +63 134 £550 +4.76% 176
London +54 134 £476 -7.12% 124
North of England +32 42 £437 -8.11% 64
South East +9 38 £550 +15.79% 80
South West +33 23 £615 +2.50% 40
East of England +31 23 £430 +14.67% 57
Yorkshire +29 19 £575 -7.78% 25
North West +10 17 £313 -30.56% 31
Midlands -9 15 £550 +10.00% 40
Scotland +2 13 £443 -28.51% 25
Wales +12 8 £425 -34.06% 22
West Midlands +4 8 £210 -60.00% 24
East Midlands -5 7 £550 +12.82% 15
North East - 6 £250 - 11
Northern Ireland -7 5 £160 - 1

TCP/IP
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 22 (6.09%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (4.99%) nginx
3 15 (4.16%) SharePoint
4 14 (3.88%) Confluence
5 12 (3.32%) Traefik
6 5 (1.39%) Apache Spark
6 5 (1.39%) IIS
6 5 (1.39%) OpenStack
7 4 (1.11%) Apache
8 2 (0.55%) CICS
8 2 (0.55%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.28%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
Applications
1 29 (8.03%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.39%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.28%) AutoCAD
4 1 (0.28%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Fidessa
2 1 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 130 (36.01%) AWS
2 126 (34.90%) Azure
3 53 (14.68%) AWS CloudFormation
4 51 (14.13%) GCP
5 38 (10.53%) Microsoft 365
6 37 (10.25%) Entra ID
7 24 (6.65%) PaaS
7 24 (6.65%) SaaS
8 22 (6.09%) GitHub
9 21 (5.82%) IaaS
9 21 (5.82%) OpenShift
10 19 (5.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 14 (3.88%) Amazon ECS
11 14 (3.88%) Amazon EKS
11 14 (3.88%) AWS Fargate
11 14 (3.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 12 (3.32%) Amazon EC2
13 11 (3.05%) Azure Monitor
14 10 (2.77%) Azure DevOps
15 9 (2.49%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 211 (58.45%) DNS
2 134 (37.12%) Firewall
3 124 (34.35%) DHCP
4 107 (29.64%) VPN
5 88 (24.38%) BGP
6 80 (22.16%) OSPF
7 79 (21.88%) HTTP
8 61 (16.90%) Network Security
9 56 (15.51%) WAN
10 48 (13.30%) VLAN
11 47 (13.02%) LAN
12 32 (8.86%) Wireless
13 26 (7.20%) SSL
14 22 (6.09%) MPLS
15 21 (5.82%) HTTPS
16 19 (5.26%) IPsec
16 19 (5.26%) SMTP
17 18 (4.99%) Cisco Nexus
18 16 (4.43%) Wi-Fi
19 15 (4.16%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (4.99%) Amazon RDS
1 18 (4.99%) SQL Server
2 17 (4.71%) MongoDB
3 15 (4.16%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (3.32%) Hadoop
5 10 (2.77%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (1.94%) Data Lake
7 6 (1.66%) Data Warehouse
8 5 (1.39%) Apache Hive
8 5 (1.39%) Apache Iceberg
8 5 (1.39%) MySQL
8 5 (1.39%) Parquet
8 5 (1.39%) Presto
9 4 (1.11%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.83%) InfluxDB
10 3 (0.83%) Looker
10 3 (0.83%) Power BI
11 2 (0.55%) MariaDB
11 2 (0.55%) NoSQL
11 2 (0.55%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 39 (10.80%) Jenkins
2 23 (6.37%) GitLab
3 18 (4.99%) JIRA
4 17 (4.71%) Git
5 11 (3.05%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (2.77%) Subversion
7 9 (2.49%) TeamCity
8 7 (1.94%) Visual Studio
9 5 (1.39%) Eclipse
9 5 (1.39%) Poetry
9 5 (1.39%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.28%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.28%) Gerrit
General
1 124 (34.35%) Social Skills
2 49 (13.57%) Analytical Skills
3 36 (9.97%) Finance
4 21 (5.82%) Banking
5 18 (4.99%) Military
6 17 (4.71%) Telecoms
7 14 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (3.05%) Legal
8 11 (3.05%) Public Sector
9 6 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.39%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.39%) Marketing
10 5 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (1.11%) French Language
11 4 (1.11%) Games
11 4 (1.11%) Police
12 3 (0.83%) Electronics
13 2 (0.55%) Automotive
13 2 (0.55%) Front Office
13 2 (0.55%) Law
Job Titles
1 59 (16.34%) Network Engineer
2 50 (13.85%) Architect
3 44 (12.19%) Senior
4 32 (8.86%) DevOps Engineer
5 31 (8.59%) Analyst
6 27 (7.48%) Technical Architect
7 24 (6.65%) Support Engineer
8 23 (6.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 21 (5.82%) Senior DevOps
10 19 (5.26%) IT Support
11 18 (4.99%) Cloud Architect
11 18 (4.99%) Cloud Native Architect
12 17 (4.71%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 15 (4.16%) IT Engineer
13 15 (4.16%) IT Support Engineer
14 14 (3.88%) Administrator
15 13 (3.60%) Lead
15 13 (3.60%) Security Architect
16 12 (3.32%) Network Security Architect
17 11 (3.05%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (5.82%) Elastic Stack
2 14 (3.88%) .NET
2 14 (3.88%) cloud-init
2 14 (3.88%) Kafka
2 14 (3.88%) Keycloak
3 11 (3.05%) REST
4 9 (2.49%) LDAP
4 9 (2.49%) Node.js
5 7 (1.94%) React
6 6 (1.66%) 802.1X
6 6 (1.66%) Web Services
7 5 (1.39%) Dask
7 5 (1.39%) LAPP Stack
7 5 (1.39%) YAML
8 3 (0.83%) JSON
8 3 (0.83%) OpenTelemetry
8 3 (0.83%) Yocto
9 2 (0.55%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.55%) FIX Protocol
9 2 (0.55%) PostGIS
Miscellaneous
1 29 (8.03%) Data Centre
2 27 (7.48%) Cloud Native
3 26 (7.20%) PKI
4 12 (3.32%) Self-Motivation
5 11 (3.05%) Management Information System
6 10 (2.77%) Clustering
7 9 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (2.49%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (2.22%) Driving Licence
8 8 (2.22%) Hybrid Cloud
8 8 (2.22%) Security Posture
9 7 (1.94%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.94%) Mainframe
9 7 (1.94%) Replication
9 7 (1.94%) Security Operations Centre
10 6 (1.66%) Algorithms
10 6 (1.66%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.39%) Video\Live Streaming
12 4 (1.11%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 117 (32.41%) Linux
2 116 (32.13%) Windows
3 54 (14.96%) Windows Server
4 45 (12.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (8.03%) Unix
6 20 (5.54%) CentOS
7 18 (4.99%) Windows 10
8 10 (2.77%) Ubuntu
9 9 (2.49%) Mac OS
9 9 (2.49%) Solaris
10 7 (1.94%) zOS
11 6 (1.66%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (1.39%) Android
12 5 (1.39%) Check Point GAiA
13 4 (1.11%) Apple iOS
13 4 (1.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.83%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.83%) Mac OS X
14 3 (0.83%) Windows 7
14 3 (0.83%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
2 75 (20.78%) DevOps
3 71 (19.67%) Infrastructure as Code
4 67 (18.56%) CI/CD
5 47 (13.02%) ITIL
6 45 (12.47%) Agile
7 44 (12.19%) Containerisation
8 38 (10.53%) High Availability
9 37 (10.25%) Continuous Integration
10 33 (9.14%) Computer Science
10 33 (9.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 32 (8.86%) Test Automation
12 29 (8.03%) Incident Management
13 28 (7.76%) SIEM
14 26 (7.20%) Security Operations
15 24 (6.65%) Cloud Security
16 23 (6.37%) Cybersecurity
16 23 (6.37%) Observability
17 22 (6.09%) Customer Service
17 22 (6.09%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 113 (31.30%) Python
2 51 (14.13%) Bash
3 50 (13.85%) PowerShell
4 22 (6.09%) SQL
5 21 (5.82%) Bicep
5 21 (5.82%) Java
6 18 (4.99%) Go
6 18 (4.99%) Perl
7 15 (4.16%) C#
8 14 (3.88%) JavaScript
9 13 (3.60%) C++
10 10 (2.77%) Shell Script
11 6 (1.66%) C
11 6 (1.66%) Kusto Query Language
12 5 (1.39%) JCL
12 5 (1.39%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.83%) VBScript
14 2 (0.55%) COBOL
14 2 (0.55%) PHP
14 2 (0.55%) VB
Qualifications
1 86 (23.82%) Security Cleared
2 66 (18.28%) Cisco Certification
3 63 (17.45%) SC Cleared
4 53 (14.68%) CCNP
5 50 (13.85%) Degree
6 40 (11.08%) CCNA
7 23 (6.37%) DV Cleared
8 22 (6.09%) AWS Certification
9 15 (4.16%) Computer Science Degree
10 13 (3.60%) CCIE
11 10 (2.77%) CCSE
11 10 (2.77%) Microsoft Certification
12 8 (2.22%) A+ Certification
13 7 (1.94%) JNCIA
14 6 (1.66%) CCSA
15 5 (1.39%) CCSP
15 5 (1.39%) CEH
15 5 (1.39%) Check Point Certification
15 5 (1.39%) CISSP
15 5 (1.39%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.09%) NCSC
2 14 (3.88%) SLA
3 11 (3.05%) GDPR
4 8 (2.22%) NIST
4 8 (2.22%) QA
5 7 (1.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (1.39%) Government Security Classifications
7 4 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.83%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.55%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.55%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.55%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 61 (16.90%) VMware Infrastructure
2 60 (16.62%) Active Directory
3 54 (14.96%) Docker
4 21 (5.82%) Hyper-V
5 16 (4.43%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (3.60%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (3.05%) vSphere
8 10 (2.77%) VMware NSX
9 6 (1.66%) NFS
10 4 (1.11%) Veritas File System
10 4 (1.11%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 2 (0.55%) iptables
11 2 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.55%) XenApp
12 1 (0.28%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.28%) Firmware
12 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 1 (0.28%) Samba
12 1 (0.28%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 94 (26.04%) Terraform
2 77 (21.33%) Ansible
3 71 (19.67%) Kubernetes
4 32 (8.86%) Grafana
5 29 (8.03%) Puppet
6 28 (7.76%) Prometheus
7 19 (5.26%) Progress Chef
8 17 (4.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 17 (4.71%) SCCM
8 17 (4.71%) ZABBIX
9 16 (4.43%) Packer
10 15 (4.16%) FortiGate
10 15 (4.16%) Rancher
11 14 (3.88%) Consul
11 14 (3.88%) Istio
11 14 (3.88%) Jamf Pro
11 14 (3.88%) linkerd
12 12 (3.32%) HAProxy
13 11 (3.05%) Red Hat Satellite
14 8 (2.22%) QRadar
Vendors
1 107 (29.64%) Cisco
2 92 (25.48%) Microsoft
3 81 (22.44%) VMware
4 62 (17.17%) Red Hat
5 56 (15.51%) Palo Alto
6 49 (13.57%) CheckPoint
7 34 (9.42%) Splunk
8 32 (8.86%) Fortinet
9 24 (6.65%) ServiceNow
10 19 (5.26%) Apple
11 15 (4.16%) Juniper
11 15 (4.16%) Okta
12 13 (3.60%) IBM
13 12 (3.32%) ESET
13 12 (3.32%) F5
13 12 (3.32%) Google
14 11 (3.05%) CyberArk
14 11 (3.05%) SolarWinds
15 10 (2.77%) Dell
15 10 (2.77%) Oracle